publishing

Even though it__ pleasing to boast about achievements I have earned in my generation, nothing makes me more content in the world than just having the exciting opportunity to share my passion of work with the public. What is even more exhilarating, is being able (having the capability) to spend quality time with my loving wife, (Gloria) and family doing what I love most in the world -- writing. Their total well-being and health, along with my health too means everything to me. I have had my fair share of narrow escapes in my life to know how important my family, and health are to me. I will never take that for granted again _ ever.

To refer even in passing to unpublished or struggling authors and their problems is to put oneself at some risk, so I will say here and now that any unsolicited manuscripts or typescripts sent to me will be destroyed unread. You must make your way yourself. Why you should be so set on the nearly always disappointing profession is a puzzling question.

I hope that, whatever happens within the publishing industry, because of the increased control writers have of their own careers, better sales information and the advent of the internet, that ultimately this change in our working environment will be a change for the better.

Not everyone will like what you write but there's a certain group who'll love what you write. Keep WRITING for them.

Writing the same kind of material is no guarantee you'll be working from the same ethos so that writers from different fields are just as likely to have an understanding of each other's work as someone working in the same genre.

Writing is such a solitary occupation that it takes a long time to build up a group of professional peers with whom you genuinely identify.

Nowadays, the Internet decides if you're good, not the big man in the big office. No matter how important that man thinks he is, everyone else knows that he's not important anymore, and the Internet decides these things, here in the modern age.

NEWSPAPER: What great paper is the Earth; what a typeface is the Day; what ink is the Night! _ Everyone prints, everyone reads; no one understands.

It is proper Netiquette to post pictures with status updates to make them more engaging. NetworkEtiquette.net

It is bound to be a failure, every book is a failure, but I do know with some clarity what kind of book I want to write.

Confidence is going after Moby Dick in a rowboat and taking the tartar sauce with you.

One alphabet at a time, you can write an encyclopaedia. One word at a time, you can publish an entire library.

A person who wrote badly did better than a person who does not write at all. A bad writing can be corrected. An empty page remains an empty page.

Before Gutenberg, libraries were small -- the Cambridge University library had only 122 volumes in 1424, for instance; after Gutenberg literacy became widespread.

Don't simply dream, create. Don't simply create, ship. Don't simply ship, dream.

Contract law is essentially a defensive scorched-earth battleground where the constant question is, __f my business partner was possessed by a brain-eating monster from beyond spacetime tomorrow, what is the worst thing they could do to me?

Publishing is a business and writing is an art. The two have to be crammed together despite the clearly different motivations behind them.

An author who gives a manager or publisher any rights in his work except those immediately and specifically required for its publication or performance is for business purposes an imbecile.